


Heavy are the burdens from another set of stars

by In_this_life_and_the_next



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Earth-38 (CW DC TV Universe), F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 06:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_this_life_and_the_next/pseuds/In_this_life_and_the_next
Summary: ( thoughts about Kara's visits to alternate earth's )When Kara stared up at the stars at night, alone in her apartment, her mind couldn’t stop wondering through all the possible worlds that could have been. That doorway to Barry’s world had opened up so much. Too much. It hurt, knowing that in some versions of time and life and the universe, Krypton was still bright in the sky.It was different reaching through space and portals and landing on solid ground and breathing in the air and looking up at the sky and thinking '' this is not my world.'' And realising or wondering or asking of the observing stars '' what became of me here? ''OrI seriously have so many thoughts about Kara visiting these alternate Earths. So much grief and pain and the endless ache of wondering what life could have been.





	Heavy are the burdens from another set of stars

**Author's Note:**

> Those crossovers really just get me in the feelings when I start to think about what the heck it must be like for Kara to land on a different version of earth and think - oh wait. There's no Supergirl here? I never landed? Then what happened to me? 
> 
> Kara's already haunted by the death of her whole planet, can you imagine having the opportunity to step forward through the veil between worlds and be greeted by a sky that might hold her planet? I mean what a mind - fuck that would give to any one. And seeing an evil version of yourself when your whole life and core goals and personality were driven from what you assumed was a fundamental sense of being a good person? 
> 
> A lot to unpack!  
> I just had a thrilling time just thinking about all of this stuff.

There was always something so heavy in Kara’s chest after she visited another alternate world. The first time she had visited Barry’s world, the disquiet in her chest had barely been noticeable. It was just the puzzling, niggling feeling of wrongness that Kal and Kara had never landed on this earth. Barry’s earth had its own wonder, a particle reactor explosion had created meta humans and superspeed created new futures and messed with time. But it did not have aliens.

As Kara walked that earth and looked to the stars she wondered why. She wondered if Krypton was up there, far away and if she was on it. If she had managed to grow old there. Live and die under a red sun. Never knowing of life on earth or with powers. Maybe she had lived long and happy, never having to hug her parents for the last time at aged 13. Maybe in this world her parents were there the day she turned 18 to officially welcome her into the ranks of the guild she’d been born for. Or maybe Krypton was gone up there too. Another empty spot in space where a civilisation had lived and died. Maybe Krypton had burned and so had she.

Maybe her pod never made it out of the timeless void of the phantom zone. Maybe she was up there still, a 13 year old girl trapped in timelessness for eternity. Never to grow old or to wake. She would dream of nothing forever and time would pass her by. Maybe Kal was there too, or lost elsewhere among the stars. Maybe he was here, but he had grown up so human he had never wanted to become Superman. Maybe he was out there, on the farm where he was raised, and looked after the cattle and fixed the fence posts. Maybe that was all he wanted, no manifest destiny to weigh him down or the heavy burden of duty on his heart.

She wondered what Alex was doing here, on this earth. Without an alien sister to land and ruin her childhood. Maybe she would still have a father if he didn’t have to trade himself to keep Kara safe. She hoped Alex was happy here. She hoped she had found a sort of peace in her life and a loving family.

What would Alex be like without endlessly self-sacrificing to keep her sister safe? Would she still turn to drink and drugs spend years of her 20s lost in a spiral that only let out after a drunken arrest and recruitment into a secret organisation?

Alex was driven by duty in her world, always, always duty. It weighed on her so profoundly and shaped her every move. In Kara’s world it was their mother who had placed that burden there once, always _look after your sister_ before _look after yourself._ Alex only had 16 years of being the first priority before nothing was all about her ever again. No matter what it was all about keeping Kara safe and making sure nobody discovered who she really was. Maybe without that first endless ask and sacrifice Alex would not have followed the steady drum of duty for the rest of her life.

But maybe she had, maybe following the drum beat of duty would always be a part of Alex. Maybe Alex would always be drawn to service and sacrifice. Maybe even in a world without aliens or a sister, she would serve, following that noble voice into the army. Maybe in that world, she would meet Lucy far earlier, under the banner of a war and in the shifting sands of a desert instead of years later after Lucy’s deployments were over and Alex was a seasoned agent at the DEO. Maybe in that world they recognised something each other, a spark, a meaning, a familiar soul and found true love without shouldering years of trauma alone first.

Maybe they could have fought together in a world without Kara, and kept each other safe. Maybe in a world without aliens Lucy’s father would not be such a terrible man, guided by hate and fear inspired by the god that was Kal-El on earth. Maybe their family would not be based on such unstable foundations that fractured up and left Lucy and Lois barely acquainted.

But maybe Lucy’s mother was always destined to die young, and their family would never survive the fallout. Maybe Lucy was always going to serve, running from the ghosts of her family and Lois name splashed across every newspaper in Metropolis.

She wondered what would have happened to Lucy here, where she might be. If she was still over in the desert of another country, or if all that was left of her was a 21 gun salute and a folded American flag over a casket. Or maybe she had found peace somewhere else. Maybe the army hadn’t called to her here, maybe that siren song in her bones hadn’t drawn her into the heart of conflicts always ready to risk life and limb in the name of duty.

Maybe she was just a lawyer, battling with words and wit instead of weapons and fists. Or a brilliant and kind Doctor. Lucy had talked about medical training, the desire to know and help and heal instead of just inflicting injuries and pain and death. Maybe Lucy didn’t have as many ghosts in her eyes and old friends that would never come home. Maybe in this world Lucy used her hands to heal and help, maybe they were gentle and bore few scars and trauma. 

Or maybe in this world, Lucy had served, but maybe she hadn’t come back all in one piece. Her Lucy bore terrible scars from injuries she barely acknowledged, but maybe in other worlds she had not been quite so lucky to come home with all her limbs. Lucy talked about it, those she knew who had lost bits of themselves to IEDS and were lucky to be alive at all. She talked about an IED going off so, so, so close to her and the shards of shrapnel that had torn through her skin. Maybe in another world she had walked just a bit quicker, had not stopped a few meters away to adjust her vest on her shoulders. Maybe that IED had found its mark well and truly under her legs before it exploded.

But maybe she was happy here, unburdened by war. Maybe she and Alex met by sheer accident on the snowing streets of National City. Maybe they bonded over a shared love of Whisky and fell in love the easy way. Maybe there was no need for Myriad and pain and death and Supergirl. Maybe they could have a love not forged in war, or deserts, or the battleship grey halls of the DEO. Maybe no one needed to die or be shot and injured before those two locked eyes and recognised they were staring at the other half of their soul.

Kara hoped Alex was happy here. Prayed that Lucy had found her, no matter how. She hoped they were in love and had built a life together. Without Kara. Without duty. Without burdens and fate and saving the world. She hoped they were both alive. That it in this world their names was not just the calling card of sand and sadness and quiet graves and flowers delivered by a famous sister or a mum with no other children because one never fell from the stars. 

Kara left Earth One and returned home with a new weight on her shoulders. The burden of what could have been and if that is what it should be. She and Kal had changed this world so much. Her pod out of that phantom zone had led the prison Fort Rozz to earth and from there led the rest of the universe to earth’s door. She had burdened Alex so much by being her sister. And Kal-El had inspired a level of fear in humanity that had only prolonged their anger and hate of the unknown, long before Kara arrived on Earth.

But the second time she visited Barry’s earth it was so much worse. Instead of just the wrongness that was learning you didn’t exist on the world you loved and that the world seemed to be fine with this – it was the horrifying sickening despair that came with meeting an evil version of yourself.

This wasn’t even comparable to Red Kryptonite. That had been her worst thoughts come to life yes, but they had been the worst thoughts of earth 38’s Kara Danvers.

But this… this was meeting the worst possible version of yourself. A version that you never would have thought had the potential to exist anywhere. It was like reading the awful history books of the second world war – and thinking, _I would have done something,_ and then meeting the Nazi leader version of yourself and being proved so absolutely wrong.

Earth X’s Kara was a radical racial supremist who believed in her divine right to rule as a god over the weak people of earth, separating value and worth by race and sexuality and gender. She was the exact antithesis of who Kara believed she was and what she stood for. She was a cold blooded killer who propped up a dictatorship that was a constant enthusiastic participant in genocide and torture and abominations.

Landing on a different earth had changed that version of Kara so completely it was almost impossible to come to terms with. The little girl on krypton had landed on a new planet full of violence and death and instead of doing anything to prevent it, had somehow been corrupted beyond all moral repair. She had been the blond haired, blue eyed symbol of Aryan perfection and she had the power of a god. She had become an idol and a leader and death personified and she had loved it. She had not fought this dark destiny – perhaps the grief from losing krypton and her world had poisoned her so completely in a planet where she did not meet Alex and her adoptive mum. Maybe without Alex and Eliza Kara would always turn her down a darker path. One family away from a world of horror. One family away from turning away from the light and shouldering her anger and letting it rage and rage and burn.

Kara can try and imagine it, will herself back to remember that first moment she woke on a new planet. Her pod had opened and even thought it had been decades, to Kara krypton had just burned, and the only thing she knew was grief. She had just hugged her parents goodbye without really knowing it meant goodbye forever. She had been sent away and moments later, she had seen her whole planet consumed by an explosion. Even thought it had been years and Krypton was nothing but dust in the endless expanse of space, Kara woke on a new planet and she could still feel her mother in her arms in the seconds they had been allowed to say goodbye.

So what if she had been surrounded by a different army, one who saw a perfect child fall from the stars and then saw her fly. It would have seemed like manifest destiny and the blessing of all the gods that the path was right and that the Reich was not only justified, but was the product of divine purpose.

Kara could not imagine bowing to that, to believing it was true, she could not look at that and think it could ever be ok. But one version of her had seen all the horrors of the earth she had landed on and decided not to fight. Somewhere out there in one of thousands of different realities, she – _Kara –_ let her anger burn bright and committed atrocities. One Kara had not fought. One Kara had bowed before a crown of hate and murder. One Kara had been crowned Queen of a dystopia and used her powers made to help and protect to destroy and murder. She had been worshipped somewhere and she had _thought it was her purpose._  Sent from a burning planet, sent from death and made from fire to rule a world with more of the same. If all she knew was burned and gone, why not become a dark god of another planet? Why not spread that fear and destruction across the stars. Why not cling on to those feelings of despair and anger and rage and let them pour from her eyes and strike down lesser beings. One Kara had given herself up and took the route that led her being crowned general and god and victor and righteous. And when that Kara’s heart was decaying from the force of a star that did not want its power in her bones, she had looked to Kara’s earth and seen Supergirl and thought her weak. She had thought her wrong and thought herself strong.

Kara imagines now that it was Rao himself who had seen the last drops of his legacy be poisoned and deigned it not to be so. That Rao had looked across the universe to the little girl burdened with being the last, who carried the flame of all Krypton in her blood and saw one Kara out of millions who was not worthy of the power Earth bestowed upon her.

 Kara who out of all of Rao’s children, was one of only a few to ever be sent to a world where Rao’s blessing manifested physically as godhood. In earth 38 Kara’s darkest moments, when she questioned why she lived out of billions from Krypton, her gifts were a reminder strangely, of home most of all. But that Kara, Earth X Kara, she perverted Rao’s blessing. She tainted the legacy of last and as she died in Kara’s arms, exploding above the skies of a different earth and returned again to Rao, Earth 38 Kara took it as a warning. _This is not who you were made to be. Your powers were not made for that._ Life was Rao’s to give and Rao’s to take. That Kara had not been worthy and her heart had turned to ashes in her chest, but Kara’s heart was still strong in her chest and so perhaps she was worthy of Rao’s blessing.

Kara returned home again. This time the knowledge of who she could have been weighing heavily on her heart. It was this head and this same set of bones that had made that choice, one world out of countless others… not to fight injustice, but to cause injustice. Kara had also been certain in the moments she was forced into sleep – with her own face with glinting evil eyes grinning down at her - that she was going to die on a strange Earth with the worst version of herself imagine to blame. When she woke at all, with her beating heart still in her chest she felt that new burden of what could have been weighing heavily upon it.

But Kara had not been poisoned by the sun, and took hope in knowing that on this earth at least she had kept Rao’s favour. She would not let him down, she would keep the memory and customs of Krypton alive for as long as she lived. Embodying all that it meant to truly be Kryptonian when she became the best version of Supergirl she could be. And one day when she joined her ancestors in the deep red halls of Rao, she would have earned her peace and she would greet him as a friend.

When Kara stared up at the stars at night, alone in her apartment, her mind couldn’t stop wondering through all the possible worlds that could have been. She was just one of millions of possibilities and at times it truly felt like her life was a mess. That doorway to Barry’s world had opened up so much. Too much. It hurt, knowing that in some versions of time and life and the universe, Krypton was still bright in the sky.

It was that, first and foremost that Kara couldn’t stop fixating on. It’s not like she wasn’t constantly thinking about it before she starting world – jumping to alternate planets. The thought of _‘’ What if Krypton didn’t burn. ‘’_ Had echoed around her head for so long she couldn’t imagine her life without it ringing in her ears. Seeing and experiencing different versions of earth had only made it louder, because somewhere out there it was actually true.

This world had brought Kara so much pain. Kara could still see the fires of krypton when she closed her eyes and when she went to sleep she was back in the timeless void of the Phantom Zone. Her pain and past were a part of her, and she was much more than a girl with powers when she wore that crest on her chest. There was an eternity to her eyes and years on her soul that her body would never show. There was grief so tremendous it was a vast ocean inside of her, lapping against her ribs and pouring out of her mouth – for it was for a whole world.

She felt like Atlas, holding up the sky, not for Earth, but for the last, last, last bright burning light of Rao inside her that was all that remained of her culture and her planet. She held inside such torment because the memory of a hug was fading further and further away and one day when she too was nothing but dust, there would be nothing to remember her mother’s arms or her father’s laughter. For Kal was a Kryptonian, but he was a farm boy from Kansas first. He would always be at home here, he was a human with unbreakable skin and the heart of a man.

Kara had the universes inside her head and the memory of planets and solar systems millions of lightyears away. No one on earth would ever come close to understanding just who she could have been in that sector of the galaxy that Earth would never come to know. Kara had so much knowledge in her too, she had the wealth of Krypton’s scientific endeavours and achievements in her brain and at first stepping on earth was like going back hundreds of years of Kryptonian technology. She was so different here, a god among men. A stranger among friends. A meteorite of change that had crashed into the pages of earth’s history and marked it so deeply it could never forget the House of El’s crest. 

One day when Humanity ventures beyond their first planet, the house of El’s crest will be known to the universe again. The legacy of the last Kryptonians once again spread out among the stars. The memory of Kara’s last hug would be forgotten, but Krypton would never fade truly from the universe as the crest of EL was carved into the mountains of empty worlds as new civilisations grew from space ships, known as peace and love and freedom and truth. The last daughter and the last son would have a place in history for time immemorial.

The third time Kara was invited to Barry’s world on another ‘’saving the universe’’ type of deal, it was to discover a book held the power to rewrite reality.

A god or ghost or demon from beyond this universe and many others had stepped through the veil between the worlds and demanded the earth’s heroes prove themselves and their world worthy of what challenges were to come. He gave a mad man a magic book with the power to change their lives, time and all of history at the whim of his thoughts.

Kara had been with Clark when Barry and Oliver had burst through into her world and desperately asked her if she knew who they were. 

To Barry and Oliver of course, it was Kara’s earth that was alternate – that was wrong. Perhaps the fact that Kara did not know them here, that there was no Green Arrow or The Flash burrowed as deep into their thoughts as it did to Kara when she visited them.

At Kent farm Barry and Oliver met Superman and perhaps the question of why they did not exist here was answered without wanting to truly know the answer at all. Perhaps this earth did not need vigilantes or speedsters when it had both a Superman and a Supergirl to protect it.

Kara could see the clouds gathering in Oliver’s eyes as he realised the magnitude of what it meant to stand on a world where events unfurled so differently from one’s own.

They had both met Kara before of course – and in the safety of their own world remarked just how cool it was that other worlds had aliens. They had been introduced to Kara at just the right moment they needed her – an unbreakable alien from another world to help defeat an invasion of thousands of creatures from another planet. Kara had simply appeared, a goofy smiled alien kid. Sure she had unbreakable skin and insane heat vision and she could fly and lift or crush anything with her bare hands… but she was just a visitor from a whole other dimension. They didn’t wonder then as Kara burst through the walls of their worlds answering their call to help, if they existed in a world without Kara Zor-El; what might become of them in a world with her in it?

It was different reaching through space and portals and landing on solid ground and breathing in the air and looking up at the sky and thinking _this is not my world._ And realising or wondering or asking of the observing stars _what became of me here?_

It was a burden to bear those unanswerable questions. Because they could be answered, but perhaps should not be. For knowing the truth of what you could have been is just as likely to drive you mad as not knowing a single thing.

There was a fever to Barry and Oliver’s insistence on fixing time and reality in their world. For if the unthinkable was true, and what was done could not be undone – their world would forever be like all the millions of worlds that they could visit but that would not be home.

They could return with Kara and be utterly alone on a new earth. An earth that had no vigilantes or meta-humans. Where Barry might still be a cop, or his mum might still be alive if time hadn’t be so thoroughly warped by time travel and a particle reactor exploding.

There was no Green Arrow here too. Maybe the Queen’s Gambit had never sailed that day and Sarah and Oliver’s lives were not derailed so completely. Maybe he was still that young and naïve billionaire’s son who had lived in Central City .Maybe here, he never had to grow up like he did. On an island where he became a murderer and a marksman with a list. Maybe he had gone on that fateful voyage. Maybe he was still on that island, or lost in the endlessness of being a hired killer or maybe he had joined the league of assassins with Sarah. Maybe they had gone through that together and kept each other just a little bit more sane. Maybe they lost themselves to that dark and never went home. Maybe the kid Oliver Queen died on the Queen’s Gambit and the world never found him alive again.

Kara never spoke of if she knew them back on her world. Maybe she didn’t want to give Oliver any more ghosts or scars or wishes or regrets.

They could stay here, in a world that was quiet for them. In a world without those endless aching years of pain or trauma that would never leave a person’s bones. But what life would that be for them? A world where they still had the scars from what they had done but the world never set the fire that caused them? A world where versions of the people they had killed or had hurt them still walked the earth. Kara could not keep them, nor did she wish it of them. She could not give them the same haunting questions of better lives on other worlds that haunted her so dearly.

And again Kara stepped into another world. This time it was not the echoing question of where she had ended up here that rang in her ears and would not stop. Nor was it facing the atrocities that a version of herself had committed and the question of who she had the potential to become. This time it was stepping into a world full to the brim of superheros and being unable to shake the feeling that she was oh so very alone back home.

Here there were so many strange and powerful people the world had been forced to adapt and understand and look at the spectacular and fit It into an ordinarily aspect of life. Here each city seemed to have a guardian or a god and a meta-human bent on protecting it and countless more bent on destroying it. This world was a constant push and pull between two sides of who people could be. It showed the best and the worst of humanity and the best and worst of the meta-humans and vigilantes and people and criminals who lived there.

For Kara it was just her and Kal-El. Supergirl and Superman. Two lonely gods protecting a whole planet by themselves.

Yes the world had changed since she became Supergirl. Aliens of all kinds now walked the earth. But it did not change the fact that it had been _her_ pod coming out of that Phantom Zone that had shown Fort Rozz the way. Earth was on the map because of her. Aliens fled their planets and their wars and destructions and made homes on a blue dot far away from all else that came before it.

It also did not change what the people of earth thought of them, Kara and Kal. Kal was first – and the love and fear and hate he inspired was staggering. Here was someone born with the powers of a god. A real god. He could raze the earth if he wished. He could lay waste to civilisations and people and cities. He could stand before an onslaught and not be harmed, he could turn his strength on those who turned against him and no one would be able to withstand his wish for their death. If Kal-El wanted your breath gone from your lungs there was no doubt in all the world that he could do it. He could do it easily and no power on heaven or earth would be able to stay his hand.

The Earth looked to the sky and saw a figure floating above the city. He chose to save people, he chose to be the best of humanity. But in every action the people saw – no matter how great or good or brave, they saw the breadth of his power and they were afraid. It was that fear that turned Lex Luthor from a friend to an enemy. It was that fear that led to the deaths of hundreds and Lex tried to stop Superman from reaching the potential he had in his bones to one day do something worse than all those he had ever stopped. Because one day Superman could change his mind.

And then there was Kara. Unveiling herself as Supergirl and the world realised that there was more than one. Two gods. Two unbreakable weapons. On their Earth, Kara and Kal-El always, always, always had to be the best of humanity – even though Kara was the furthest thing from human. But here their superheros were allowed to be complex, morally grey, subjective and dark. But even here none were as powerful as they were.

There would always be something separating them from the rest. Always something glinting in humanities eyes as they beheld them. Fear. Awe. Anger. Inadequacy.

Everything was flipped around again and Kara found herself against a doppelganger of her cousin. Other worlds seemed to be full of familiar faces with new and evil souls staring out of their eyes. First Kara had to confront Overgirl, and now, Superman, Dictator of Earth. At least this time there was solace for it was not him, not his heart or head. It was just his skin made by a twisted book to fit a Doctor with the power to warp reality.

He took her powers, he copied them, made them his – but he did not take her gender. It was Kara he held captive and saw spectacle of her strength and powers but he used the body of the mystery man whom she had fought beside against the super powered android he created to oppose them. He had grinned, wearing her cousins face and told her that he feared nothing in the world and Kara wanted to break him into pieces.

But what hurt,

What really hurt,

What dug into Kara’s bones and cracked her soul and made her ache and wish so dearly for home she could barely breathe – was staring out of that cell to see it was Alex who was her jailer. Alex the loyal soldier. An Alex who followed in the footsteps of a corrupted Superman. Alex who was not herself, Alex who was still so far retreated into herself she did not let the words pass her lips of who she might love and could not bear to think of what it might mean if she was gay. Alex who looked at her and did not see her sister, Alex whose eyes were full, so full of a burning endless hatred. What did the people of this earth think of Kara? The wrong Doctor had rewritten all reality and made himself god – king of all. In the eyes of this universe it was he who was good and strong and just – and therefore, to be his enemy, to deserve this cell, Kara was truly a monster. Who knows what horrors it seemed she had committed here for Alex’s eyes to shine so full of hate as they befell Kara.

Kara hoped, she hoped and hoped and hoped that his book had twisted this world so badly it had made this Alex so sad and alone and uncertain. That this Alex was just a blip out of time and reality created by the distorted wishes of a madman. She feels certain it was so – the false illusion that had been cast all over the world was so thin, but a hazy mirage shimmering over what was true – that it took but a single conversation from a stranger pleading that she is her sister who knows Alex is more than this, to return Alex to the honourable warrior Kara knows her to be.

Alex breaks free from a magic spell and recognises her sisters heart even in a world where Kara Zor-El never landed on earth and frees Kara from her prison. They are about to die together, guards with guns up and deadly grins. Evil Superman’s eyes are glowing and even then faced with certain death this Alex does not falter and says, _she is my sister._

And Kara cannot describe how proud she is in that moment. To have Alex as her sister. Of how lucky she must have been for any family to belong to, she got her. Alex had her back at home and across the worlds where no version of Kara had ever stepped before.  

_Well then._ Evil Superman had grinned at the pair of them. _You can burn together._

Kara will not let her sister burn, here or any other world - but she can find a peace in facing death together knowing that no matter what, they have each other’s back. Her Alex till the last.

They do not die. But Kara will almost die trying to reverse what has been done to this world – she will put this world back. She will fix this version of Alex’s life. She will take her out of that prison and put her back in her happily ever after or whatever awaits her once the book is destroyed.  Alex did not let her down – How could Kara ever live with the same? 

The world is being rewritten again, the mad Doctor bending the world to his vision more and more – but he cannot unwrite Kara or Clarke. They do not belong in the fabric of this time and cannot be harmed by his meddling. Her cousin faces against the monster wearing his face as Kara flies around the world as fast, as fast, as fast as she can.

Barry is a blur beneath her, a streak of red lightening. They break the sound barrier together and the boom echoes endlessly across the world. She can feel the power in her bones thrum and her skin starting to burn as she flies faster and faster and she is circling the world in seconds. Even her Kryptonian body is burning up its reserves and last bits of the solar radiation that gives her its powers.

They slow down time – that is the power that they have in them. The power that hums and burns and crackles inside them. It takes a girl who is a god on earth with all the power of the sun at her fingertips and a boy struck by lightning who is the fastest man alive to strike time meaningless. To claw the worlds spin to a stop and freeze their adversaries long enough for a man who is senselessly good with a bow to destroy a magic book.

There is a weight in the air when Kara leaves this time. Of things unspoken. Of promises and bargains struck that have yet to unfold. Perhaps a part of Kara knows that she should have died, should have burnt up circling the world using that much power. Perhaps she recognises something in the shadow of Oliver’s eyes – the weight of something so heavy it cannot barely be comprehended. The trade he made for them both.

Kara does not ask, perhaps she sees nothing wrong. But never the less, she steps back into her own world and settles on familiar soil and breathes the right air and feels more at peace. Because of course Kara would always help her friends, she would run through a portal to another world in the blink of an eye if her friends were in danger. If she is needed to turn time to a stop and land barely breathing with the radiation in her cells so close to empty – then she would. Time and time again. Countless versions of her on countless worlds.

But there is a sanctuary to being home. A sanctum. A relief of knowing that no matter what dangers she faces here, even if they are too great for Supergirl to bear – that she will die on familiar soil. The world would know what happens to Supergirl and there would be a quieter but not fully explained obituary for one Kara Danvers of Catco. Magazine.

For she can imagine it, the possibilities of what could have happened still echo through her and disrupt her thoughts. What if she had died on Barry’s world – barely even stopping at the D.E.O to say goodbye and nothing but a short phone call to one Lena Luthor to say she is going out of town for a few day’s chasing a story. A text message to Alex because the portal has just opened up and there isn’t enough time. And of course she’ll be home… of course she will return through that portal one day.

But what if she didn’t.

What if Supergirl simply disappeared from the pages of history and appeared in the pages of another world’s obituaries. They would hail her there, as a hero. They would have statues to her legacy, of how she helped stop the man who rewrote their reality at the cost of her life. The girl from another world who had no call to help but the call of duty and honour and friendship. The girl who owed nothing to the world that she had died saving and who they could never repay the debt.

How in that world, perhaps her friends would see the news. Perhaps they would even lay flowers at the tomb of the unknown alien from another world. Perhaps in that world the word Supergirl becomes to mean something else. Someone unexpected who came at great personal cost to answer the call to help. Perhaps it would inspire the next generations of space travellers and explorers to always go forth with that message in their hearts. Go and help, go and heal. Do not conquer or destroy. Take forth the message of Supergirl into the galaxies, the mantra of Supergirl in their hearts. 

Her friends, different versions of them staring up at her statue and not ever knowing just how much she meant to them all in a different life. That somewhere out there on her earth, versions of them will never come close to closure. The grief that they have in their hearts and screaming into an endless abyss should be enough to transcend the walls between the worlds. Perhaps as a different Alex and a different James and a different Lucy stare up at that great monument of a different world’s hero they feel a twinge in their chests that they cannot place. A _I feel as though I should know you._ A _who could you have been to me?_

In Kara’s flat her keys sit on her table and collect dust. Supergirl goes missing. Just disappears one day and is never heard from again. No amount of searching or scanning or screaming can get her back or find her. She is simply gone. To the world she was here one day and gone the next.

And Kara Danvers, her last words so short and brief and breathless. Goes off following a story and is never seen again. Journalism is a dangerous job, getting more and more dangerous for years. But Kara’s colleges at Catco. Cannot imagine anything like that ever happening. They try and see what story she was tracking, try and see where she might have gone and what might have befallen her there.

The official story that the D.E.O gives out and is preserved in the pages of History is that one Kara Danvers was last seen entering a dangerous area of the mountains to the east of National City following a story on a missing girl. Maybe they both got caught by the same serial killer. Both stuck by the same bad weather. Drowned in the same avalanche that cut off the pass a few days after Kara Danvers’s left National City.

Lena pours money into finding her best friend. Lena cannot comprehend that she is gone. She hires the best money can buy but never finds a single viable lead. It breaks something in her.

Months later, Alex sits her down, with deep dark circles under her eyes and the chasms of grief echoing in every world. There is nothing to lose but years of wondering and Alex cannot do that to Kara’s best friend. Lena deserves closure, even if the world will never truly get it.

Lena learns who Kara is when she can never talk to her again. _She wanted a friend who knew her just as Kara._ Say’s Alex. _Without the burden of being Supergirl._

Oliver had come to them.

Holding her body.

Stepping through the Portal into the DEO with Supergirl’s listless form. He told her friends what she had done for them. What she had saved and sacrificed. Alex cannot help but hate him and his world for taking Kara away from them. His world will always remember Supergirl as a hero at the endless cost to Kara’s own world. Left without its hero and its friend and its sister.

But Kara did not die, she returns with the weight of all that could have been if she had been just a little bit slower. It is a paralysing sort of fear, _what if._

She should really talk to her friends about it. She has to talk about it. She has to get someone to understand just what it feels like to stand about to die on a world that is not quite right and can never be your home. About all that she has seen and done in the battlegrounds of a different planet. All the deaths she’s nearly died and all the possibilities she has seen unfurled about her life and time and destiny.

There are lifetimes of burdens and possibilities weighing her down and one day she will sit Lena down and truly share who she is. Explain the weight to her words and the shadows in her eyes. Someone to hold her hand and ground her truly in _what is now_ and not _what has been._

Something in Kara knows though that she is not done with Barry’s world yet. She will always answer the call to help and shoulder the burdens of existing under a different set of stars. But perhaps next time she can bring her sister or Kal again, it helps standing under a different sun with someone who knows what it should be like and how it is different. Someone who can see other versions of time and still remember what it was like on their earth. Maybe one day she will take Lena there, just to show her the soil from another world. To be anonymous or at least not infamous. To Walk the world a Luthor, and not have bodies cast in its shadow. 

There is so much to do and so much to see and so much potential in all the worlds they have at their fingertips. World jumping would always give more endless questions than it answers but Kara is safe assured at least and at last of one thing if any at all, that she is truly home with Alex and Eliza and Lucy and Lena and James and Winn and the D.E.O.

Home is not just earth, it is the friends she has made and the endless joy she has gotten from truly belonging in people’s lives.  Home is in Lena’s smile and Lucy’s laughter and Alex’s hugs and Eliza’s heart and Jon’s handshake and James conversation and Winn’s endless energy.

She keeps those things close like armour, or a shield against the niggling endlessness of _what if._ The next time she steps into Barry’s world at the call to stop the end of the world, she will draw those memories close. Memories of her world. Memories that prove her world is enough, even if the stars in the sky of a different planet only show her more questions than answers. Even if the desire to truly know if there is a world up there with her home planet safe in the sky will never truly be quelled.

She has the strength to turn away, flick the button on the portal device and step back home. Where is knows she truly belongs. 

With her Family.  

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about writing about what it would be like if Kara did visit a world with Kypton on it. Seeing a version of yourself that was so dramatically different to who she had actually grown up to be. That version of herself would be like a mirror of who Kara would have been or what Kara thinks sometimes, what her life should have been like. 
> 
> I also was going to write about the parallels between Kara and Kate Kane but I thought this was getting a bit long and that I would never ever post it if I kept adding millions more ideas. 
> 
> I might do another chapter though, god knows I have so many thoughts about this! Also about how Lena would feel too! Like gosh she's adopted, what if her real mum hadn't died... what if lex was not a horrible person. So much to think about. 
> 
> Let me know if that's something you'd be cool to read! 
> 
> Also let me know what you like think about when Kara goes to Barry's world and stuff, like what does it make you imagine and think about what could have happened? 
> 
> Peace out!


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